How I Created My Own Wallpaper! Using Unreal Engine and Wallpaper Engine

How this all started...

For a few years now, I’ve been rocking the default wallpaper on both my laptop and desktop, usually a high-resolution photo of some animal or landscape that Windows decides to swap out every now and then. Don’t get me wrong, these photos are beautiful, but as much as I enjoy receiving unsolicited images from Windows, they have this odd habit of adding them to my OneDrive with very creative filenames.

Ah yes, I quite like 133713843025071302.JPG, it really captures the nostalgic essence of The Lion King I watched as a kid. But seriously, these random images just end up cluttering my Pictures folder. It gets annoying.

So, I decided to make my own wallpaper!

As one of my final degree projects, I wanted to learn how to create a moving wallpaper using Unreal Engine 5 and Wallpaper Engine. I was already using Unreal for my team project Roman Rumble, but I wanted to push my skillset further through in-engine tools and tech art. This blog will cover the plan and process behind creating that final render.

The Plan

Before diving into production, let’s outline some of the theories and plans that helped shape the development.

Style and Aesthetics

I started by putting together a mood board with art styles close to what I envisioned. My goal was to minimize texture use, reduce unique models, and rely on lighting and fog to mask unnecessary details. This approach not only matched the minimalistic style I wanted, but also saved time, I only had eight weeks to complete this alongside other projects.

After finding a particular reference image that really clicked, I decided to create a similar environment.

With the visual direction in place, the next step was figuring out the technical side of rendering the wallpaper.

File formats and Wallpaper Engine

Wallpaper Engine can live-render scenes directly on your desktop, but for a high-quality static render, I chose to export a 4K MP4 video instead. This kept things simple and compatible across different software.

Now, surely Unreal Engine 5 can handle that out of the box, right?

Well, yes and no. It takes a bit of setup. You’ll need to enable the Movie Render Queue plugin and install FFmpeg into your engine files. Luckily, Unreal Engine’s documentation does a great job walking through the process, saving me from having to pretend I fully understand how FFmpeg works.

Looping 101

Before building the scene, I had to figure out how to make the final render seamlessly loop. It sounds tricky, but it’s pretty manageable if you follow a few simple rules:

Rule 1: Set a fixed number of frames in your sequencer and decide on a frame rate before rendering. In my case, I wanted a 1-minute video at 60fps, that’s 60 × 60 = 3600 frames total. Keep in mind, the longer the video, the less noticeable the loop becomes.

Rule 2: Each moving element must fit neatly within the loop, with no visual overlap. However, elements can move or loop multiple times as long as their full cycle stays within a fraction of the total video length.

Rule 3: Have at least one animation that lasts the entire loop, it serves as a frame of reference to check for seamlessness. This could be a simple looping noise texture or a light that gradually shifts exposure. In my scene, I used clouds driven by a moving noise texture as my main reference loop.

Although there are probably more rules to this process, I just find these ones the most useful from my experience.

The Process

With the plan sorted, it was time to bring the environment to life. Each iteration built on the last, gradually shaping the scene as I experimented with lighting, materials, and VFX until everything finally came together.

Iteration One

I started off simple, using the Landscape Tool to block out the environment and establish the general camera perspective for the wallpaper. This stage was all about composition, figuring out where the main features would sit, how the lighting would flow across the terrain, and which areas would draw the viewer’s eye. It didn’t look like much yet, but it laid a solid foundation to build on.

Iteration Two

Next, I turned my attention to the atmosphere. I created a moonlit sky using lighting tweaks and custom skybox shaders to capture that calm, night-time feel I was aiming for. Then came the sculpting, shaping cliffs, carving out the ground, and defining the overall silhouette of the scene.

I also built a master cel-shaded material that could be used for both the cliffs and terrain, helping to keep the environment consistent and in line with the minimalistic art style I wanted. Around this stage, I started experimenting with the Niagara Fluids plugin to see if I could create an interesting-looking river and waterfall mist.

I also set up a Niagara VFX system that spawns the waterfall meshes with a custom looping material that uses seamless noise, creating a convincing, stylised waterfall flow. I also added volumetric clouds, which i

nteract with the moonlight rays to give the sky a more dynamic and atmospheric look.

Iteration Three

This was when the environment really started coming together. I picked up a tool called TreeIt, which let me generate custom trees for the scene. Using my own leaf texture, I created a material with a world-space gradient highlight to add depth and variation to the tree colours while keeping that clean, minimalistic look.

I also gave the leaves subtle motion, making them sway as if caught by the wind. The trees higher up on the cliffs move faster than the ones below in the valley, which adds a nice sense of depth and realism.

To break up the cool colour palette of the night scene, I added fireflies and a warm point light, which gives the impression of a distant campfire. It helped balance the colours and brought a bit of warmth to the environment.

The Final Iteration

The last stage was all about polish. I added post-processing effects to create subtle outlines around the leaves and cliffs, which reinforced the stylised look and gave the scene more depth.

I also replaced the Niagara Fluids effects for the river and mist. As powerful as the system is, it was tricky to customise and didn’t quite match the art direction I wanted. So instead, I swapped it out for shader-based effects, a glistening, stylised river material and a simple sprite-based mist VFX for the waterfall.

These final touches tied everything together, the lighting, materials, and effects all working in harmony to

create a seamless, looping wallpaper that matched the vision I started with.

Now to add it in Wallpaper Engine!

Once you’ve rendered your final scene in crisp 4K at 60fps, it’s time to bring it into Wallpaper Engine. Simply create a new wallpaper using the 2D Scene template (there’s great documentation for this), then drag and drop your MP4 file, and you’re good to go!

From there, you can play around with the engine’s built-in effects to add a bit of flair to your wallpaper. Personally, I just added some ambient sound to complement the scene’s atmosphere. The Wallpaper Engine documentation is pretty extensive, and there are heaps of tutorials online if you want to dive deeper.

If you’d like to check out my final wallpaper, it’s available on the Steam Workshop.

Big thanks to the audio creators for the night ambience, blowing wind, and waterfall sound files, they really helped bring the whole thing to life.